if you ever go you'll drop me straight to hell
by wintermadethissoldier
Summary: major endgame spoilers! fix-it fic for endgame. steve goes back in time instead of clint first, all the way back to 1943. fast forward to after the battle, how steve and bucky should have reunited.
1. backwards

Steve takes a breath, shaking out his arms as he steps up onto the platform. Time travel. Why not? After everything that's happened in the past 100 years, nothing seems impossible anymore. He eased a plane down into Arctic and woke up 70 years later in New York City; it was like that, just backwards. Almost. He glances over at Bruce, busy tinkering away on a machine Steve has zero hopes of even beginning to understand. He trusts them—trusts Bruce, really—for this to work, but he can't help but feel like his stomach is going to turn inside out. It seemed like every time he thinks he has a grip on reality, it dissolves between his finger—-the Tesseract, S.H.I.E.L.D. tech, life on other planets, and now time travel. But if it works, they have a chance of saving billions of people. If it doesn't and Steve ends up stuck in the past or ends up scrambled eggs in the quantum realm, at least he would leave knowing he tried everything. No matter how small the chance that this would work, the chance to bring them all back was worth losing everything. Wakanda was without their king, Rocket had lost his entire family, and Steve had lost Bucky—

_Bucky._

The pain twists his chest like a hot knife before he can stop it, letting out a small huff of surprise at how violently the pain still comes. Five years have passed, but the guilt and pain have barely lessened; Steve still bolts out of bed, shaking and covered in cold sweat at the the merciless nightmare that plagues him night after night. Bucky, eyes full of fear and confusion, saying his name one last time before dissolving into dust before him. He looks just as panicked as he did when he fell from that train in 1945 and Steve feels every bit as responsible as he did 80 years ago. He couldn't save him, couldn't do anything but grasp at what was left of him in the leaves. It should have been Steve. There was no logic to who disappeared and who stayed, only the itching surety that fate was hell-bent on tearing them apart again and again.

Something had broken off in his chest when Bucky disappeared, hollowing him out and leaving him gasping for breath. It was a different kind of pain than when Bucky plummeted to his death in Europe, something that felt less like consuming grief and more like someone had reached inside of his chest and pulled everything important, everything vital. It was the same twinge in his chest he had when Bucky broke his arm after falling off a bike when he was eleven, the thing that snapped Steve's eyes towards him when Bucky was injured on the battlefield even before he cried out. It was that bone-deep surety, taken and multiplied to an infinity that made Steve reconsider everything he knew about their relationship. The more the years wore on after the snap, the more he unraveled through his grief about what this meant. He missed them all, still mourned and grieved for the loss of Sam, for Wanda, for T'Challa. He missed Peggy, who would have known what to do; who would've kicked him off of his ass and told him to stop moping, to start fixing it. But there were times where he could recognize the world as it was, without them. It made him angry, made him despair, drove him to find some kind of solution to bring them back, but he realized that they were living in a very different world.

His mind would not accept that for Bucky. Logically, he knew that Bucky was gone; physically, he could feel whatever was binding them together had snapped and left him floating without a tether. But his mind came up against a barrier every time he thought about Bucky being gone, as if his heart and mind could not process the irreconcilable truth. He could not look out at the world and accept it, could not recognize it. The earth may continue turning for everyone else, but for him it had stopped five years ago. His heart, or whatever was left of it, screamed "_bring him back bring him back bring him back he can't be gone not again_" for the past five years.

He had saved him once from Hydra's experiments, seen him die, seen the blankness in his eyes when he called out to him, brought him back from Hydra's mind-control, protected him from virtually every country on earth and his own team, had watched him go back into cryofreeze, had asked for his help one last time and watched him dissolve into nothing but dust in front of him. Every time Bucky left, Steve grew closer and closer to realizing some buried truth within him. It had been just out of reach for the past century, but Steve had nothing but free time after the snap. There was chaos in the world, but so little that they could do, so little that _he_ could do. No more existential fights, no more missions. Just him, Natasha, and an empty HQ. For the first time, he was able to search for that truth, finally wrapping his fingers around it and pulling until everything came into focus.

Tasha knew, of course. She had seen it from the second Steve realized the Winter Soldier was Bucky; she had watched him pull apart himself and the world to find Bucky again, to save him. She was constantly reminded of her own relationship with Clint, the way they fought death again and again for each other, the way they constantly hovered over the line of no return with each other, the decades of dancing around the subject and denying themselves the slightest consideration. She had watched Steve unravel over the past five years like she had never seen before, something teetering on hopelessness. She knew that he would volunteer to be the first to test Tony's new toys, knew where he would try to go and who he would try to find. She had turned away at the barely-concealed desperation in his eyes, left New York to track down Clint and bring him back from the edge. They were both tired of losing their second halves.

"You ready?" Bruce calls without looking up from the endless rows of dials and levers.

"As ready as I'll ever be." Steve flips his helmet on, glancing out at his teammates. This will work. It has to. For him, for Bucky, for all of them.

"You only have about a half an hour before I pull you out. Do whatever you have to to confirm the date, but do it fast." Another nod from Steve. Bruce grabbed a handle on the board and glanced back at Steve one more time. "Austria, November 3, 1943."

"Whatever it takes." He barely finishes before Bruce pulls the lever, shrinking him and rocketing him through time itself.

Steve pitches into the grass as he landed, sticks and rocks digging into his back as he struggled to breathe from the transition. Whatever Banner did, he had gotten him somewhere nowhere near mid-May New York; the landscape was too quiet, too forested, too much of a chill in the air. He tried to keep his focus solely on the mission, but he couldn't help but feel a flicker of hope—it could've worked. It was only the first step in the long list of highly temperamental variables, but this would be the closest they had gotten in five years.

Bruce had all but dropped him off at the front door of the Hydra weapons facility—no plane jump this time around. The building still looms in the forest, which was a good sign that he hadn't overshot his time frame, but they couldn't take chances that particle physics travel was imperfect in its timing. If he was going to bring over three billion people back to Earth, they couldn't be working on a margin of error larger than a day.

Though his 1943 memories aren't crystal clear, he navigates the building without getting alerting the guards, sticking to the shadows and ignoring the thrum of Tesseract-powered weaponry around him. He knows they'll all be destroyed by the night if he's gotten the date right, but he still wishes Howard had left the damn thing in the ocean. He wastes too many minutes waiting for the guards to change their rotation by the cells, but he's soon swinging himself up onto the catwalks above the makeshift prison. He chances a glance down one of the circular grates and his heart gives a painful twist at the sight of his old teammates as they grumble and argue among themselves. It would be so easy to snap the locks open and set them free to wreak havoc on the facility and start the long trek back to Italy. But he had gotten enough pointed remarks from both Bruce and Tony to not mess with _anything_ to know that he shouldn't. They still didn't know exactly how time travel worked and no one was ready to risk the future being even more irreparably fucked up all because Steve didn't know how to stop. But if he set them free now, they would chalk up the Allied liberation to a stroke of good fortune and a hallucination, not Captain America. But if Steve never had a chance to save them, he would have been stuck as a propaganda tool in tights and would have never had clearance to put together the Howling Commandos, let alone go out into battle. But if he never got the Howling Commandos together, they would have never been on that train, and Bucky would've never—

He braces himself against the metal floor, pushing himself back from the gate. For the first time, he is realizing that he shouldn't have been the one to go. He feels his loyalties being pulled in two directions, painful and insistent. He could potentially save Bucky _right now_. He could save him from decades of brainwashing, of torture, of having his autonomy stripped away from him. Bucky had become someone far different from who he was in 1945, and Steve had a chance to fix that. Bucky could have a life, settle down after the war, have a chance at a _normal_ life free from assassinating presidents and a metal arm. Maybe if he did this, the events of history would play out completely differently; Thanos would never get the chance to get all of the Infinity Stones. Tony would still have his parents...

How was he supposed to choose between that and leaving Bucky here, strapped to a table and made to be a Nazi science experiment? How was he supposed to leave the past knowing everything that comes in the future? Even if they manage to get all of the Infinity Stones and undo the snap, how is Steve supposed to ever look Bucky in the eyes knowing that he didn't save him? He punches the floor beneath him, sharp and quick, tired of constantly being pulled between his head and his heart. The soldiers beneath him give a yelp of surprise, crowding around the grate and demanding to know what's going on up there. Steve curses under his breath and runs to the end of the catwalks, jumping down and slipping into the hallway.

He never slips during missions.

Never used to.

He checks his watch, cursing again at the realization that he only has about 2 minutes left until Bruce pulls him back to 80 years in the future. He takes off at a sprint, following the turns of the maze-like halls like he does in his nightmares, though in the night he rarely finds Bucky alive on the table like he is now, struggling weakly against his restraints as Steve runs in. Zola was nowhere to be found, and Steve checks the desk for the daily calendar he know will be there. November 3rd, 1943. Bruce did it. They did it. He has few seconds to recognize their accomplishment before he sees Bucky's head lolling to the side on the table, muttering nonsense to himself. His pupils are blown and unfocused as he tries to make sense of who's running towards him, his drugged face twisting into what could be a smile. "Steve?"

Steve's hand reaches out towards Bucky's face, his chest tight and breathing short like he had just run 30 miles. "Buck, I-"

There's a blinding flash and he's back on the platform, his hand outstretched in front of him to cup a ghost's cheek. He drops it, blinking away the abrupt transition and letting the wave of emotions hit him again and again like a tidal wave, unchecked. What was he going to say to Bucky? In his drugged and delusional state, he would be surprised if Bucky remembered it, or if it was just another hallucination lost to those horrific weeks.

"Steve? Steve! Did it work?" He could hear Bruce's insistent shouts to him as the world pieced itself back together. He pushed back his helmet with a click, trying to focus on his teammates. It was 2023, though he felt like whatever had been wrenched from chest was lying on that table in 1943.

"It worked." His voice comes out hoarse and strained and he clears his throat, tried again. "It worked." He stood up, schooling his face into determination. There was a beat of silence as everyone took in what this meant, what they would have to do in the coming days. They could do it. It would take a million factors going right at the exact same time, but they could do it.

"Great, glad to know I was right as usual." Tony broke the silence, clapping his hands together. "Meet in fifteen. We've got work to do."


	2. aftermath

Steve was fairly positive that he had broken all of his ribs. A collapsed lung, maybe. He could feel his body knitting itself back together, the serum doing its job at keeping him _super_, but it wasn't nearly fast enough to keep him from stopping Thanos. He knew they couldn't win this. His hope had bottomed out the second he saw the army begin to pour out, but he wasn't about to die on his knees. 80 years had passed since the Vita-Rays, but he was still that scrappy kid in the back alleys of Brooklyn that didn't know how to back down from a fight. Only this time, Bucky wasn't here to rescue him from the bullies. His knees almost buckled, hopelessness overwhelming him as the magnitude of his imminent failure washed over him. He had tried. He had brought Bucky back from hell again and again only to fail him one last time. Even if Bruce really had managed to bring everyone back, they would all turn to dust as soon as Thanos got the gauntlet back. 

His last prayer was that there really was some kind of afterlife, somewhere where he could explain to Bucky, to all of them what had happened, that he had tried, that he was—

"On your left." A voice he hadn't heard in five years buzzes in his ear over the comms, causing Steve's heart to skip a beat or six. He spun around, wondering if Thanos had thrown him so hard against the rubble that he had started to hallucinate. And then the portals appear, Sam's familiar wings soaring over him with a familiarity so potent Steve thinks he might collapse from relief alone. Bruce had done it. Portals keep appearing on either side of him, the entirety of the Wakandan military, Wanda, the Guardians, and everyone else he hadn't seen in five years dropping in all behind him. He searches wildly for the familiar head of brown hair, the glint of a metal arm, but the fighting has already started and there isn't time. He knows he's here, he can feel it in his bones and through whatever connection was forged between them a century ago. He calls Mjölnir to him, feeling the lightning crackle through him and give him renewed strength.

It's automatic to him now, the language of battle in a team, the comforting familiarity of people he hadn't seen in half a decade relaying positions to each other over the comms. He feels alive, his reflexes and body working on autopilot with a new kind of frenzy borne from the knowledge that they did it. They brought everyone back and they were going to win. Sam is covering him, Peter is soaring above the fray with the gauntlet in his arms, and Bucky is out there somewhere, no doubt picking off the Chitauri one by one with his impeccable aim. He feels almost giddy, finding a rhythm between his shield and Mjölnir and relishing in battle for the first time in years.

He feels a familiar twinge in his chest as they make their way through Thanos's army and his eyes know exactly where to go, his whole body orienting towards Bucky like a compass. He's hissing, pressing a hand over his right forearm where a blast had grazed him. Rocket is covering him, and Steve can only imagine the obscenities they are lobbing at each other as Bucky reloads.

Steve's awed concentration is broken as a Chitauri comes for his throat, grappling with him before Steve kicks it back, slicing it in two with his shield. By the time he looks back, Bucky is already gone, lost in the thick of the battle. But Steve feels clear-headed, a focus he hasn't felt since he stepped out of Erskine's machine, like a missing limb had been reattached. Steve felt the inevitability of war, knowing somewhere deep down that they would win. They had all lost too much, some permanently, for this to go south.

He watches, shortly thereafter, as Thanos's army dissolves into dust one by one, just as he had watched half of his team and Wakanda do years ago. He's too far away to see who had the gauntlet, who had saved them all. All he can see was the rubble, the dust settling, and then, _there_—weak light glinting off of a metal arm. He barely registers the fact that he was moving—_running_—towards Bucky. Bucky's eyes are still trained on the powdered remains of a Chitauri, no doubt thinking about when he died the same way. His eyes shoot up as he heard the rapidly-approaching footsteps, reflexively aiming at Steve's chest with his rifle.

But it was Steve.

Steve, the last thing he saw before he dissolved. Steve, his anguished face rushing towards him as he melted into nothingness. Steve, who had pulled him back from Zola and Austria, from Hydra, from his own mind, from the rest of the world as they fought to kill him. Steve, who acted like it was his life mission to pay Bucky back for all of the times he saved him from back-alley bullies by putting his life and reputation on the line for him again and again without hesitation. Steve, who somehow did the impossible and brought him back—brought them _all_ back. Steve, who was holding Thor's hammer, which Bucky thought was impossible. But then again, he had just come back from the dead. Again.

Steve stops to a halt as Bucky lowered his gun, dropping Mjölnir and his shield with a clatter against the rubble. He steps over mangled steel, his face as broken open as it was the first time he saw Bucky on that bridge in DC. Like he has seen a ghost, one that kept coming back to life, stubbornly, for him. He pulls Bucky by his shoulders into a crushing hug, not feeling his broken ribs and innumerable cuts and bruises across his body. He doesn't hear Bucky's surprised huff as the breath is squeezed out of him, the clang of his gun dropping to the ground. All he knows is Bucky, alive and warm, smelling like gunpowder, the bite of metal against the rips in his suit as Bucky folds his arms around him in response. He doesn't care that they are being too rough with each other, holding each other too tightly for what they had just gone through and the bruises they were surely giving each other. They had spent almost a century as each other's suns, keeping each other alive and grounded when no one else would. Steve was not going to let him disappear again, wasn't going to let Bucky go where he couldn't follow.

Steve pulls back, a firm hand gripping the back of Bucky's neck as he pressed their foreheads together. Both of them are crying, something they haven't done around each other since Sarah's funeral. Living this long, doing what they had done, it was all too much for anyone. Steve knows with certainty that he would spend the rest of his life searching and fighting for him, no matter how many times or how long it took, but _God_ he just wanted them to stay together, like this, forever. They breathe heavily from the aftershocks of fighting, from the terrifying knowledge that they almost lost each other again, from the closeness that they hadn't been able to get in five years and so rarely even before that. 

"You brought me back." Bucky's voice is hoarse from disuse, thick with emotion.

"Bucky, I-" Steve stopped himself, not knowing what he wanted to say. That he was sorry that he had let this happen in the first place, that it had taken him so long to find a way to bring him back. That he hadn't been with him, hadn't been there for him. That he went back and saw him in Austria and didn't change the past. That he had chosen a certain future with him in it rather than an uncertain past where Bucky lived a normal life, aged and died naturally. That he was horribly selfish when it came to Bucky, how his own stupid decisions tore at him day and night and how he thinks Bucky would never be able to forgive him. He wants to say that he had finally figured it out, why Bucky turned him inside out every time and left him raw and vulnerable. Why he feels like every time, he reverts back to who he was before the serum, gasping from an asthma attack after his mother died, groping blindly for Bucky in the dark of his living room. Panicked, fumbling, single-minded in staying alive. Bucky kept him alive. He knows, deep down, that he wouldn't have been able to survive it all if he hadn't been frozen for 70 years. The decades without Bucky, the nightmares, the constant guilt and searching for his remains among the snow would have eaten him alive. He would've had a full life in a world he understood with a woman he loved, but he would have been torn apart by it in the end. He barely held it together for the two years before he knew Bucky was still alive, largely lost his mind after the snap. He had lost his parents, countless friends, Peggy, had traveled in time both ways, but the one thing that made Steve completely collapse was losing Bucky. Whatever happened, whatever would happen, it would always be him.

"Buck." It comes out as a half-strangled whisper, and ice meets azure. That's all it takes, the broken blue that Steve's known his whole life. He frames Bucky's face with his hands and pulls him in, pressing their mouths together. Bucky tastes like salt and iron and home and Steve wonders how the hell they managed to stay away from each other like this for so long. He can feel something knitting itself back together inside of him, not his ribs, but something far deeper than he had been worrying to shreds since Bucky first peeled him off the ground in a back alley.

He feels Bucky stiffen underneath him and immediately lets go, putting distance between them. Steve can feel his heart plummeting to his feet, shame creeping up his neck. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_ for thinking that this was the time, that Bucky even felt anything for him. They had barely any time to talk between Bucky's stay in Wakanda and the snap; hell, there hadn't been time to _really_ talk since 1945. Bucky had been disentangling his trauma piece by piece since Steve had first said his name on that bridge, but that wasn't nearly enough time. Bucky had been focused on getting himself back before the snap and was God knows where after it, not spending the past five years spending virtually every free hour thinking about what they meant to each other. He had kissed without asking, another violation of Bucky's autonomy in a long history of not belonging to himself. In the span of seconds, Steve felt himself spiraling, cursing himself again and again for his selfishness, for putting what he needed above giving Bucky space after he literally _came back from the dead._ Why wasn't it enough for him just to know that Bucky was alive, real and solid and _here_. 

"I'm s-" Steve doesn't even get his apology past his lips before Bucky stops him, metal fingers gripping Steve's upper arm and keeping him in place. 

"Stupid. I know." And Steve has only a second to register how Bucky sounds more like himself than he has since 1945 before Bucky's mouth is on his, hard and desperate. Steve stumbles back a step at the suddenness and force of it only to be pulled back and set steady by a firm hand at his lower back. It's bordering on too much, Bucky's hand digging into fresh wounds, his insistent mouth on Steve's own, the way their teeth knock against each other and scrape their lower lips. Bucky kisses like a dead man risen, desperate to feel life and to prove that he's real. Steve lets him lead, lets him take what he needs, carding his fingers through Bucky's hair and pulling him closer when he gets a low groan of approval. He's wanted this for so goddamn long, can't believe he repressed everything for half a century when _this _felt more right than anything he had ever done. He would give up being worthy enough for Mjölnir, would give up his shield and suit, would give up anything in this fucking world just to stay just like this, with his fingers knotted in Bucky's hair and lips bruised from his too-hard love.

Bucky finally pulls back, just enough to search Steve's eyes.

_Yes, I'm here. I'm real. You are alive. This is it. We are real, we are okay, _he wants to say.

What comes out instead is a half-panted, "I love you."

Bucky pauses, his grip on Steve tightening almost imperceptibly.

"You still don't know when to give up." Bucky leans in to shut him up, but Steve can hear the _I love you too_ in his words just as clear.


End file.
